Congress had a full and eventful schedule this week, not that anyone in New Jersey politics would have noticed. The state was entirely focused on its primaries for governor and State Assembly; one of the gubernatorial winners, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair), hails from Congress herself.
But while New Jersey celebrated or cursed the victories of Sherrill and Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli, a federal grand jury returned an indictment against Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), the House passed a bill eliminating billions of funding for international aid and U.S. media programs, and a sitting U.S. Senator from California was tackled to the ground at a Department of Homeland Security press conference. Here’s some of what New Jersey’s members of Congress did in Washington this week.
Delaney Hall
On May 10, one day after a scuffle broke out at Newark’s Delaney Hall immigrant detention facility following the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, officials in President Donald Trump’s administration threatened criminal charges against the three members of Congress who had engaged with immigration officers. This week, that threat was fulfilled.
Interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba announced on Tuesday, via social media, that a grand jury had returned an indictment against McIver, with charges of assaulting and impeding federal law enforcement that she said could carry up to 17 years in prison. McIver firmly denied any wrongdoing, saying the charges are an effort by the Trump administration to intimidate its political opponents.
“The facts of this case will prove I was simply doing my job and will expose these proceedings for what they are: a brazen attempt at political intimidation,” McIver said. “This indictment is no more justified than the original charges, and is an effort by Trump’s administration to dodge accountability for the chaos ICE caused and scare me out of doing the work I was elected to do. But it won’t work – I will not be intimidated.”
A lot remains uncertain about the case. Habba’s handling of the prior charges against Baraka, which was eventually dropped, was called “worrying” and “embarrassing” by a federal judge overseeing the case; it’s also not clear how long Habba, who hasn’t been confirmed by (or even nominated in) the Senate, can stay in the U.S. Attorney’s office as the case unfolds.
Democrats around the country have rallied to McIver’s defense, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries telling Punchbowl News that the charges were an “assault” on the independence of Congress and its ability to conduct oversight. But Republicans, including McIver’s own colleagues in New Jersey, have said the charges are a just response to inappropriate actions.
“Rep. McIver should be held accountable, not applauded,” Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) said. “[Her conduct] is so inappropriate and downright wrong.”
More Delaney Hall
Delaney Hall itself, meanwhile, descended into chaos late this week; disorder allegedly broke out inside the facility in protest of insufficient meals and late meals, and four inmates escaped the facility, per DHS.
Senator Andy Kim and Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), one of the other representatives who initially visited Delaney Hall with McIver in May, conducted another oversight visit of the facility on Friday. Menendez said on social media that the visit confirmed Democrats’ long-held suspicions about private detention companies like GEO Group, which operates Delaney Hall.
“We performed an oversight visit after yesterday’s concerning reports. Everything we learned today confirmed what we knew: private detention centers put profits above all else,” Menendez wrote. “During our visit, GEO execs showed up in full force, likely concerned what this means for their bottom line.”
Delaney Hall-adjacent
Two days after the indictment against McIver was announced, the Trump administration found a new Democratic member of Congress to target. Senator Alex Padilla (D-California) attempted to ask a question of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem at a press conference in his home state, but he was forcibly removed and handcuffed; DHS officials claimed that he had not stated his identity and he was seen as a potential threat, but video shows him clearly announcing himself as a senator.
The incident drew immediate condemnation from Padilla’s Democratic colleagues, with Senator Cory Booker invoking McIver and Baraka to argue that the Trump administration has made a habit of subjecting Democratic politicians to force and intimidation.
“This is a pattern and a practice,” Booker said on the Senate floor. “This is not an isolated incident. I remind people that in my own community, in the city of Newark, we had a congresswoman and a mayor at a facility, the mayor invited into the gate, congresspeople invited into a conference room, and then the mayor asked to leave – who did leave – and then numerous agents run out to arrest that Mayor.”
And Kim said in his own floor speech that, having worked in authoritarian countries during his time at the State Department, he was shocked to see such conduct in America.
“I call on all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to condemn this action, to stand united with one voice, standing up for ourselves. Otherwise we will just cast ourselves to the margins of irrelevance of this nation right now,” Kim said. “I am outraged, and I hope others are too. This is not a time to be silent.”
Rescission fission
As the Trump administration continues to unilaterally make widespread cuts across the federal government, the House approved legislation this week explicitly codifying some of those cuts via a process called rescission. The rescission bill that House Republicans passed on Thursday would claw back $9.4 billion in funds Congress had previously approved, including $8.3 billion for foreign aid and $1.1 billion for public news outlets like PBS and NPR.
A handful of Republicans objected to the bill’s cuts, but New Jersey’s three Republicans were not among them. Nearly all of the state’s Democrats voted against the bill; the lone exception was Rep. Donald Norcross (D-Camden), who remains out of Washington as he recovers from a serious gallbladder infection but made it clear that he would have voted no had he been there.
“If signed into law, the Trump-Republican recession package would take away food from hungry kids, make it easier for infectious diseases to spread, neglect Americans’ safety, and cut kids’ access to educational TV shows,” Norcross said. “It’s a reckless bill that puts billionaires first, and working families last.”
Well isn’t that special
Mikie Sherrill’s victory in the Democratic primary for governor raises the possibility of a special election for her 11th congressional district seat next year, something that both parties have been speculating about for a while now. Several local politicians have already publicly expressed interest in running, and plenty more have begun laying the groundwork behind the scenes.
“I think we should hold this seat quite handily,” Sherrill told the New Jersey Globe back in May. “I’ve had several people, who I’m not going to name, come up to me and say, ‘I might be interested,’ so I know there’s a good group of candidates who are thinking about running here.”
But there’s no guarantee that the seat will become open, of course, if Sherrill loses to Jack Ciattarelli in November. And it’s also not entirely clear yet under what schedule a hypothetical special election would proceed, thanks to a bill under consideration in the state legislature that could substantially speed up the process (a process which, under current law, would mean that 11th district voters would have to wait five or six months for a new member of Congress).
Jeffective legislating
On Monday, the House passed two resolutions condemning antisemitism in the wake of recent attacks in Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C.; one of those resolutions was authored by Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis).
Van Drew’s resolution, which straightforwardly condemned antisemitic violence, was noncontroversial and passed the House with zero no votes. But the second resolution drew some Democratic criticism for its inclusion of language praising ICE officers for “protecting the homeland,” and four New Jersey Democrats opposed it; Van Drew had warned before the votes took place that the Democratic Party had an anti-Israel problem among its ranks.
“I’m not going to go through some folks from the other side of the aisle that have said things that have been pretty blatantly anti-Israel and anti-Jewish,” he said. “The problem here … when it comes to the Jewish state and Israel has not been the Republican Party.”
Other Garden State plots
• Reps. McIver, Menendez, and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing), the original trio of representatives who were involved in the Delaney Hall scuffle, sent a letter to Trump administration officials condemning their (since scuttled) list of “sanctuary jurisdictions” that put protections in place for undocumented immigrants.
“This blatant attempt to intimidate local governments into abandoning policies designed to foster cooperation between immigrant communities and law enforcement is not only misguided – it is dangerous,” the letter stated. “The inclusion of New Jersey and other states’ jurisdictions on this list is a politically motivated attack on our nation’s values and an insult to the rule of law.”
• Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly) introduced a bipartisan bill this week that would protect baseline staffing levels at the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), a program helping those in need pay their energy bills that has come under attack from the Trump administration.
“Nearly 6 million families nationwide – and 240,000 in Jersey – rely on LIHEAP to keep the heat on in the winter and the AC running in the summer,” Gottheimer said. “President Trump is hell-bent on dismantling this critical program, firing its entire staff back in April and proposing to eliminate LIHEAP completely in his budget to Congress. My new bipartisan bill will stop these reckless cuts and ensure that no family is left in the cold or heat without help.”
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September 15, 2023 -
